What we tell of the teller’s telling
I came upon this quote while searching a book from my library regarding what to make of alleged psychical (anomalous) experiences when corroboration is lacking or insufficient:
“If I am the character-witness for an obscure man who relates a psychical incident, I am but one and may myself have been deceived in my impressions of him. If, however, the narrator is a famous man, and many persons of standing have spread abroad his reputation for judgment and character, it is much harder to believe that all could have been deceived in him.” — W.F. Prince
If I understand the author’s logic, reputation as collateral, with many vouchers for one, seems a sound method. Courts have run on less for centuries.
But if I were to apply the author’s logic to my own circumstances, then this would be a closed case before it ever opened. This is not a critique of his method, just of my situation, for which I’m obscure by both choice and design. No one can vouch for me, as I write under a name that cannot be easily found. No persons of standing have spread or can spread my reputation for quality character or sound judgment broadly, for I have taken careful steps so that none shall. That, in itself, may appear a self-defeating move, but I do not believe celebrity equals authenticity.
Upon a second reading of the first clause, however, I may myself have been deceived in my impressions of him. For the person vouching for the obscure man is himself a narrator. The persons of standing who vouch for the famous man are narrators in their turn, each requiring their own vouchers, each of whom may have been deceived in their own impressions, just as I may have been in my own. In this chain of vouchers, no first witness exists. There is only the telling of the experience, passed upward, and at the top, someone whose word must simply be taken.
The author would be right to doubt me if he were here today. My own events had all the witnesses their nature permitted. Outside of two or three experiences I can recall off-hand, the majority of my encounters have but two witnesses, and one of them cannot be deposed. My testimony, in part, waits here in these growing pages. Therefore, the very same doubts and burdens of proof that meet me at the bottom of the ladder also wait at the top, for everyone — famous or merely patient — with a book of entries older than I am.
Notes:
Quote is from Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences, by W.F. Prince (1928).
A paradox of the psychical is the need to speak of it to process, understand, and integrate it, but to speak it means to take the great risk of being disbelieved, mocked, shunned, clinically probed, and institutionalized. How does one negotiate such treacherous terrain? Thus, the misunderstanding and vilification of the anomalous, and the limitlessness of the unspoken.
In my vernacular, Psychical and Anomalous are one and the same.
W.F. Prince was an Episcopal priest turned psychical researcher. I do not share his traditions despite what appears to be our shared, asynchronous interests in anomalous experiences. I’m certain we’d have had very robust conversations, if given the opportunity.
By D. Bowman Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.